KARACHI: Afghan President Hamid Karzai has finally admitted the presence of fugitive Baloch leader Brahmdagh Bugti in his country, according to WikiLeaks cables.
Karzai revealed this during a meeting with a UN official in February 2009, days after UNHCR’s Balochistan chief John Solecki was abducted by a previously unknown Baloch militant outfit, the Balochistan United Liberation Front (BULF). He had also agreed to press Brahmdagh for Solecki’s release.
The Afghan government has been reluctant to publicly admit the Baloch rebel’s presence in the country despite Islamabad’s repeated requests for his extradition to Pakistan where the authorities blame him for instigating an uprising in the restive Balochistan province.
According to WikiLeaks, during a meeting in 2007 with the then US Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher, Karzai had expressed his unawareness about Brahmdagh’s presence in Afghanistan. When Boucher asked him if he knew anything about the Baloch leader, he said he was aware that around 200 Bugtis, “with their sons and money”, had entered his country to seek shelter. According to Karzai, he had advised them to go to the United Nations for asylum but they were frightened. Besides, Karzai added that the UN had declined to deal with the issue considering it “too sensitive.”
Although Karzai told Boucher that he was not interested to allow Baloch rebels in Afghanistan, he argued that Bugtis would blame the United States if Afghanistan turned them in. He declined to call Brahmdagh a terrorist. “Fomenting uprising doesn’t make one terrorist,” he said when Boucher told him that Pakistan had been blaming Brahmdagh for stirring unrest in Balochistan. For Karzai, the matter was so “sensitive” that he asked US officials to stop taking notes during the meeting.
The Afghan president went on to add that the elder Bugti was highly respected in the United States. “Karzai explained that Bugti had once tried to call Karzai but he had refused for the sake of good relations with Pakistan. Now he cannot forgive himself for refusing,” says a cable released by WikiLeaks.
Karzai admitted Brahmdagh’s presence in Afghanistan after UN and US officials increased pressure on him following John Solecki’s abduction, which Pakistan had blamed on Brahmdagh. During a meeting between US Ambassador to Pakistan Anne Patterson, Pakistan’s Interior Minister Rehman Malik and a UN official, the US envoy revealed that Karzai had agreed to press Brahmdagh for Solecki’s release.
Malik said that “they were surveilling an individual connected to kidnappers; this individual reported the ‘friend’ was in failing health and referred to moving west, i.e. into Afghanistan. Malik expected to hear additional information from this individual on February 20. The MOI (Ministry of Interior), however, did not have geo-coordinates on the individual (BLUF’s spokesman) who had called the press; he appeared to be continually moving on a motorbike.”
Noting that US had more assets in Afghanistan, Patterson asked Malik to allow kidnappers to move into Afghanistan. Malik continued to insist that Brahmdagh was mainly responsible for the kidnapping and that Marris and Bugtis were colluding in this. He suggested telling each tribe that the other was privately accusing it of kidnapping the UN official in order to split them. He also urged that the US should threaten Bugti with extradition to Pakistan in case something happened to Solecki. Patterson responded in that case Bugti would be extradited to the US to be tried for allegedly murdering a US citizen.
They also planned to arrange airing a feature through Pakistani electronic media, pointing out that the kidnapping had reflected shamefully on the Baloch people. After Solecki’s release, UNHCR coordinated with the US officials in Pakistan to facilitate Brahmdagh’s movement to Ireland for asylum after one of the Baloch leader’s uncles reportedly informed the aid agency that the Irish government was willing to grant him asylum. However, ISI chief Pasha clearly told the US officials that such a move will affect UN’s humanitarian efforts in Pakistan and he wanted Brahmdagh to be forced to return Pakistan to face “trial for his crimes”. Thus the UNHCR abandoned the idea as it did not want to annoy Islamabad in order to appease Baloch leaders who had helped in Solecki’s release.
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